Old Books, New Science

A Digital Initiative to Reconstruct the Manuscript Library of Henry Dyngley, a Sixteenth-Century English Collector of Medieval Medical Manuscripts

An excerpt from Wellcome MS 244, p. 12, featuring Dyngley’s disclaimer that, “Where so ever ye se this carecter HD stand in the margent of this my booke a gaynste any medycyne, oyle, ointment, salve, plaster, trete, powder, sirvpe, electuary, unguent, water, or any other thinge conteynyd within this boke that have I henry dineley provyd with owte dowte & no other have I my selfe provyd.”

This project seeks all those “caracters” in Dyngley’s collection of at least five Middle English medical manuscripts, to understand how collecting and assessing medieval knowledge in old manuscripts led early modern readers to discover new.